There are several factors that made the evidence of a pandemic less clear, both in and beyond the frum community in the tristate area
—lack of sufficient testing kits in the US greatly slowed awareness.
—limited exposure to media among rabbinonim and yeshiva oilam
—lack of coordination. Agudath Israel took a leadership role in communication but we have not previously had a single body coordinate between doctors and rabbonim for guidsnce. Also not everyone subscribes to their emails or to their guidance. That coordination of information collection and dissemination is something we can learn from and leverage better in the future.
—fake news. The internet, social media make it confusing to know who to listen to. The ones to spoke up early were viewed as alarmists. We have had similar issues with conflicting opinions on vaccines, people don’t know what to believe. i think veracity of sources is something we need to educate our community on. Though sometimes we undermine reliable sources when it comes to negative things about our people by criticizing the sources.
—There are many people promoting natural and alternative healings and promoting conspiracy theories to support those meyhods. People assert and suspect the government and pharmaceutical companies of all sorts of conspiracies.
—some Politicians also talked down the risks. I won’t mention any names.
—expectations for a quick cure. There are various drugs thought to potentially be efffective. Many thought that or warm weather might mitigate this whole thing. Or that more spread out population would lead to lower rates of infection.
—hypothesis based on statistics created confusion. Deaths occur several weeks after infections so the estimate of death rates were unclear. some People assumed the death rates (1%-4%) were grossly overstated because that only got the symptomatic patients, so people thought the death rates were maybe a tenth of that or less (people were equating this with the fatality rates of the seasonal flu). It was easy to make that mistake and others with the statistics that were available (eg that chine stars were worse because of the high rate of cigarette smoking there).
—we have never seen a plague/pandemic in our lifetimes. Previous threats (SARS, anthrax, global warming ) have all turned out to be overstated. We’ve gotten accustomed to doomsday forecasters being wrong.
—we believe G-d controls the world and the best way to gain His favor is serve him more diligently by keeping yeshivas open and trying to maintain the spirit of Purim and minyanim. There is a time and place for that. And there is a time and place where histatadlus on protecting lives supersedes that. Younger more idealistic people are prone to focus on idealism over pragmatic steps that are sometimes needed. We value our leaders Who have a broader perspective and experience, for that reason.
—even under the most severe guidance by the CDC and state leaders shopping for food was viewed as inevitable and permissible. Thus With full isolation not possible it becomes a slippery slope. E.g. to attend a family Purim gathering, a small wedding in a backyard of a yasom etc
—some people are suffering more than others from boredom, isolation, being contained in a small home, lack of privacy etc (imagine those without internet access) and are feeding a very strong emotional need for interaction that we might not find as pressing.
I’m sure you can think of others. . . Feel free to share additional reasons